Preparing Our Kitchen for the Challenge

Most sensible, educated people will be reading the Eat to Live book and getting their pre-challenge physicals taken care of. Most intelligent people will also be cleaning out their pantry and refrigerator of those foods that leave us "overfed, yet malnourished" (the heading for chapter 2)

Big Spazz would probably be reading the book just to make sure that *gasp* his 3 cups of coffee per day are actually not allowed, however, our books are stuck somewhere in "Hebron" which means they are NOT in Honolulu.

As I am the sensible one, genetically proven because I am the one with the pake blood, it is up to me to clean out the kitchen, so breakfast and dinner on day 9 and 8 of the countdown consisted of my clearing out the kitchen and cooking our malnourishing food, because I am sensibly pake, so hell if I'm throwing it out. As my grandma would say, "ho, the poho that!"

Step one: Don't save the "good stuff" for later: bust 'em out!

This includes using our Honolulu Coffee Company coffee beans that my nephew TK roasted himself. Honolulu Coffee Company on the third floor of Ala Moana is always busy, and since they have no wi fi, it's just the coffee that brings people in.  One of their baristas, Pete Licata, actually won the western regional barista competition and took like second in the international competition. Pete actually went to hand pick the beans on the Big Island from a small farm in Kona and Kau. According to my nephew, roasting is a very difficult skill to master because there's a fine line between ready and burnt. I must say we have been hiding this coffee and we may be down to this last bag, but we will enjoy it while it lasts.

Step two: Follow the advice of addicts and alcoholics

Take the concept of the nicotine patch. You get people off of their nicotine addiction by feeding them nicotine, and then slowly weaning them off the amount of nicotine they're accustomed to. Like methodone to get people off of heroine. They're both opiates.

Here's my drug of choice - bread. This one is a ginger-pineapple sweet bread. What better way to get off bread than to eat bread. Not only that, what better way to get off butter than to fry the bread with butter. And since I'm pake, may as well make the portuguese sausage in the refrigerator too so no waste.

We're leaving the reading to the young ones and those postal workers in Hebron that are holding up my books.